10 June 01

"Albanian Weekend?" Benito Mussolini's ill-fated invasion of Greece, November 1940

By September of 1939, Hitler was flirting with a simultaneous war against Britain, Poland, and France. Both Stalin in Russia and Mussolini in Italy believed that Hitler had foolishly painted himself into a corner. Mussolini, for one, was determined that he would not go down in flames along with Hitler's failed dreams. However, Hitler was to prove as tenacious as his enemies were incompetent.

In a surprise invasion in the fall of 1939, Germans smashed Poland's defenses within weeks. By May of 1940, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium had all fallen to Hitler. By June, Britain's pathetic and halfhearted effort at an expeditionary force was blunted, humiliated, and isolated on a beach at Dunkirk and avoided complete destruction only because of a heroic evacuation involving nearly every seaworthy craft in England. Before June was over, France would also be overrun. Hitler was on a roll. Stalin was troubled. Roosevelt was distressed. Churchill was desperate. Mussolini saw an opportunity!

Born in 1883 in Italy, Mussolini was, from the beginning, attracted to radical politics. As a journalist he produced a constant stream of inflammatory rhetoric. Following World War 1, Italy's streets were filled with vicious brawls and gunfights between Communists and Fascists. One camp would be backed by Hitler. The other by Stalin. Both sides attracted thugs and terrorists along with ideologues. Mussolini was in the middle of it all on the Fascist side and soon rose to a leadership position, organizing his street fighters into the hated "Blackshirts." With his Blackshirts behind him, Mussolini boldly marched into Rome in October of 1922 and seized control of the government from King Vittorio Emmanuele. Mussolini was made "prime minister" by the King, but, within a few years, he was the defacto dictator of Italy.

In an interesting side note, Mussolini's Blackshirts tried unsuccessfully to create an elite force within the Italian army, much as the SS had within the German Army. Unlike the SS, however, the Blackshirts failed completely and were looked upon as little more than nationalized criminals by friend and foe alike. They may have been successful street fighters and terrorists, but they made poor soldiers, and their reputation for cowardliness and incompetence was widespread.

Anxious to make his mark on the world stage, Mussolini actively looked for territory to invade in an effort to upstage Hitler, whom he regarded as both an ally but a rival for world attention. In October of 1935, Mussolini launched a massive invasion of Ethiopia to avenge the lingering stigma of Adowa. By May of 1936, the conquest was complete. Ethiopian fighters were no match for Mussolini's tanks, aircraft, and poison gas. Ethiopian soldiers and civilians were slaughtered wholesale. Italian forces in Ethiopia then put British forces on the defensive in Sudan and Kenya. Soon after, British-held Egypt would be invaded by Mussolini's forces.

In 1936, Mussolini's troops became actively involved in aiding Fascist General Franco in Spain during his civil war. In March of 1939, Franco's opposition collapsed. A few days later, on Good Friday, 1939, Mussolini invaded Albania with a mere four divisions. Tiny Albania was wholly outclassed, and victory was complete before the start of the following week. The invasion was known in Italy as "The Albanian Weekend" from that point forward.

However, a nation can fight too many wars for too few reasons. Mussolini's run of good luck was about to end. When he sent troops to fight with Hitler during the invasion of France, they, for the first time, faced well-trained solders using modern equipment. Repeatedly, Italian infantry was recklessly thrown into World-War-1-style, frontal assaults. They repeatedly ran into a buzz saw created by French infantry, machine guns, and tanks and were rudely roughed up. Over and over, they were forced to retreat with heavy losses. The days of easy, almost casual, victories had come to an end!

During a meeting with Hitler in October, Mussolini inwardly seethed as he politely listened to Hitler boasting on and on about his conquests. A large and robust man, Mussolini did not enjoy being reminded that his troops were embarrassed whenever their equipment was compared with that of the Germans, particularly from the mouth of this weedy, gaunt, sickly looking Austrian. He became determined to upstage Hitler in a way that everyone would notice!

Greece was selected as Mussolini's target, even though Greece represented no threat to Italy. Nevertheless, Mussolini immediately began to goad them into a fight with demeaning rhetoric and occasionally sinking one of their ships. The Greeks, under General Ioannes Metaxas, like the Finns facing Stalin a year earlier, saw the handwriting on the wall and initiated total mobilization.

Mussolini foolishly decided upon a land invasion over the Pindus Mountains which straddled the border. Supply lines were long and precarious. It was fall, and the weather was turning characteristically cold and rainy, a far cry from sunny and dry Italy, and the Ethiopian desert, where most of Mussolini's troops had trained. In addition, his invasion force was perilously small. He didn't want to commit his entire army, lest the world see the Greeks as worthy of a full-scale war. In another "weekend war," Mussolini fully expected to casually brush the Greeks aside as he had the Albanians. For a war in the mountains, Mussolini only committed one of his six mountain divisions!

The hastily prepared and ill-coordinated invasion kicked off on 30 Oct 1940. What started with such arrogant expectations quickly deteriorated into a full-scale disaster! Italian infantry columns, cautiously moving down steep, mountain passes, were suddenly ambushed by well placed and precise Greek artillery fire. Horses and mules pulling Italian artillery were rapidly killed, rendering the artillery immobile. As the Italian army continued, entire Greek divisions suddenly appeared out of nowhere and always above the Italians. Their screaming downward charges sent mortified Italians running in every direction.

The temperature dropped steadily. The invasion stalled. A stunned and dejected Mussolini began to panic and authorized a complete withdrawal. However, reversing the invasion forces proved a daunting task in its own right, as Greek forces continued to attack until all Italians were out of their Country. A more humiliating defeat could hardly be imagined. In less than a month Mussolini had suffered over 100,000 casualties, all among his best troops, and had gained nothing.

To make matters worse, Mussolini's foolish invasion had scared the Greeks enough to persuade them to allow British bombers to use their air bases, thereby allowing the British Air Force to bomb Romanian oil fields that were critical to both Hitler's and Mussolini's war effort. Heretofore, the oil fields had been out of range. Hitler was livid! In December of 1940, British forces defeated the Italians in Egypt. Mussolini was on a downward spiral from which he never recovered.

Like the Finns before them, the Greeks had been inexcusably underestimated. Like Stalin before him, Mussolini (and his soldiers) paid a terrible price for personal vanity. For generations afterward, Italian soldiers suffered from the label of coward, unfairly placed upon them by Mussolini's arrogant bungling. Blackshirts deserved the label, but not Italian soldiers. Unfortunately, it's a label they've never been able to shake.

Lesson: One can only wonder how many innocent bodies have been sacrificed to the god of vanity. Good soldiers deserve better!

/John